This article examines the international history of the early Brezhnev era, 1964–72, when the Soviet Union simultaneously became more politically stable and socially stagnant. Evidence from a variety of sources indicates that, contrary to the presumptions of many observers, Brezhnev had a serious programme (‘developed socialism’) for revitalising the Soviet system. This programme included a number of international and domestic measures to improve Soviet technology and consumer economy within a strictly managed political framework of authority. Improved relations with the United States and Western Europe (‘détente’) were crucial to this programme. Continued Cold War competition gave ‘developed socialism’ a necessary source of legitimacy. Brezhnev succeeded in selling this programme to other Cold War leaders, but he confronted debilitating resistance at home. Rising domestic expectations within the Soviet empire, the maturation of the post-Stalin generation of citizens, and pervasive social unrest exposed the hypocrisy and shallowness of ‘developed socialism’. Although Brezhnev's programme sought to give the Soviet system a new start, by the late 1960s it contributed to a deepening rot.

This article explores the complex dynamics that informed Soviet policies on the western frontier – the territories stretching between the Baltic and Black Seas annexed by the Soviets in 1939–40 – and involves several interlocking aspects: the permeability of borders prone to irredentist pressures by socialist satellites, mass tourism from the West and the Soviet bloc, and the increasing flow of information from foreign media sources; the conflicting sentiments that led locals to embrace or reject reforms based on different pre-Soviet memories, the experiences of the Second World War, postwar sovietisation policies and the suppression of the Hungarian uprising in 1956; the impact of Romanian and Czechoslovak policies on the authorities and populations of the western republics and the Kremlin's concerns over the region as key factors in the decision to invade Czechoslovakia; and, finally, the domestic and international consequences for an aging, self-styled revolutionary regime choosing between youthful reform and stagnant stability.

From the first Italian Fascism proclaimed its aim of nationalising, centralising and moralising Italian politics. During the regime the cult of the ethical state was the most obvious and continuing expression of this ambition. This article argues that the decline of Fascism, already very evident by the end of the 1930s, was closely linked to the regime's failure to realise these objectives and that this failure was in large part a consequence of the difficulties experienced by Fascism in changing the relationship between the provinces and the centre in terms of the way in which power was perceived and employed in the provinces. It is argued that these difficulties were implicit in the way in which Fascism had been understood by its provincial supporters from the very beginnings of the movement.

This article engages with the innovatory methodological approaches within political economics that no longer seek to establish a set of universal laws applicable to a variety of cases, but to provide a convincing explanation of certain individual, exemplary cases. Recent research into public administration in twentieth-century Italy is one case that supports the theories because it postulates that what Italy is today can in part be explained by the exceptional continuity of the enti pubblici (public or government agencies) whose fortunes have been largely determined by Italy's peculiar institutional and cultural milieux. The article examines (i) the proliferation of the enti pubblici as an administrative formula in response to the economic crisis after the First World War; (ii) the periods of growth and decline in the use of this formula and its connection with politics; and (iii) the ways in which the existence of a solid and widespread corporatist culture enabled the enti to survive the fall of Fascism. It concludes that the persistence of the ente pubblico is attributable to a specific culture which is an integral part of Italy's historical identity.

Robert Brennan, Ireland Standing Firm: My Wartime Mission in Washington and Eamon de Valera – A Memoir, ed. Richard H. Rupp (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2002), 182 pp., €20.00 (pb), ISBN 1900621681.

John P. Duggan, Herr Hempel at the German Legation in Dublin, 1937–1945 (Dublin and Portland, OR: Irish Academic Press, 2003), 328 pp., €45.00 (hb), ISBN 0716527464.

Mark Hull, Irish Secrets: German Espionage in Wartime Ireland, 1939–1945 (Dublin and Portland, OR: Irish Academic Press, 2003), 383 pp., €55.00 (hb), ISBN 0716527561.

MI5 and Ireland, 1939–1945: The Official History, ed. and introduced by Eunan O'Halpin (Dublin and Portland, OR: Irish Academic Press, 2003), 130 pp., €55.00 (hb), ISBN 0716527545.

Scott Kieff, ed., Perspectives on Properties of the Human Genome (Amsterdam: Elsevier Academic Press, 2003), 538 pp., €126.00, ISBN 0120176505.

John Sulston and Georgina Ferry, The Common Thread. A Story of Science, Politics, Ethics, and the Human Genome (Washington: Joseph Henry Press, 2002), 310 pp., €12.30, ISBN 0309084091.

Kevin Davies, Cracking the Genome. Inside the Race to Unlock Human DNA (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 327 pp., €18.00, ISBN 0801871409.

Bronwyn Parry, Trading the Genome. Investigating the Commodification of BioInformation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 319 pp., €37.50, ISBN 0231121741.

Magali Franceschi, Droit et marchandisation de la connaissance sur les gènes humains (Paris: CNRS Editions, 2004), 247 pp., €25.00, ISBN 2271062004.

Richard M. Stallman, Free Software, Free Society. Selected Essays (Boston, MA: GNU Press, 2002), 220 pp., €18.00, ISBN 1882114981.

Special Issue on Open Source Software Development, Research Policy 32 (2003), Elsevier Science.

Mark Gilbert, Surpassing Realism. The Politics of European Integration since 1945 (Landham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), 276 pp., $26.95, ISBN 0742519147.

John Gillingham, European Integration 1950–2003: Superstate or New Market Economy? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 588 pp., £47.50, ISBN 0521012627.

Gilles Grin, The Battle of the Single European Market. Achievements and Economics 1985–2000 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 375 pp., $144.50, ISBN 0710309384.

Wolf D. Gruner, and Wichard Woyke, Europa-Lexikon. Länder – Politik – Institutionen (Munich: Beck, 2004), 505 pp., €19.90, ISBN 3406494250.

STEVEN VAN HECKE and EMMANUEL GERARD, eds., Christian Democratic Parties in Europe since the End of the Cold War, KADOC Studies on Religion, Culture and Society 1 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2004), 343 pp., €29.00, ISBN 9058673774.

Guido Müller, Europäische Gesellschaftsbeziehungen nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg. Das Deutsch-Französische Studienkomitee und der Europäische Kulturbund (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 2005), 525 pp., €54.80, ISBN 3486577360.

Anita Ziegerhofer, Botschafter Europas. Richard Nikolaus Coudenhove-Kalergi und die Paneuropa-Bewegung in den zwanziger und dreißiger Jahren (Vienna, Cologne, Weimar: Boehlau, 2004), 587 pp., €69.00, ISBN 3205772122.

Anita Ziegerhofer, Europäische Integrationsgeschichte unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des österreichischen Weges nach Brüssel (Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 2004), 235 pp., €19.00, ISBN 3706519046.